Statement of Research Interests
Yang Jiao
I am a PhD candidate at Kansas State University interested in the areas of Labor
Economics, Household and Family Economics and Applied Econometrics. My research
stems from the genuine interests in understanding how decisions are made within household and its interactions with public policy. My current work focuses on the optimal
taxation and family labor supply behavior, gender differentials in the labor market
during economics transition, and the fertility choices and female labor supply. In this
research statement, I first describe my current work and also provide a brief outline
about where I am planning to go with it in future.
Current Work
“Individual vs.Joint Taxation for Two-Earner Altruistic Households with Independent
Time-Allocation Decisions”(Job Market Paper)
My job market paper is motivated by the question, “whether married couples should
be subject to individual- or joint-based taxation”. In this study, I explore the optimal
income tax schedule, and examine its impact on labor supply and household welfare.
I find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, joint taxation could be Pareto optimal
when couples fail to make cooperative commitment. Moreover, compared to individual taxation, welfare gains of moving to joint taxation are greatly dependent on the
altruistic preference between family members, redistributive income transfer, and the
distribution of earnings of spouses. I see my results as complementary to the findings
of Miere and Rainer (2010). Whereas their paper focuses on single earner households.
I show that joint taxation is optimal for dual-earner households, especially for couples
with unequal incomes.
This paper is related to household decision making literature. I use a prevailing
non-cooperative approach developed by Konrad and Lommerud (2000), within the
framework, individuals choose optimal time allocation to maximize their own utility
functions while taking the behaviors of other family members as given. This approach
is strongly supported by some empirical studies(Browning and Chappori, 1998; Chen
and Woolley, 2001). I extend their model by allowing for intra-household altruistic
preferences. The reason is because even though household members may act noncooperatively, they make decisions that are not completely self-interested. They do
this, not because of legal requirements or social norms, but because they are altruistic
and care about the welfare of others. Therefore, family decision model should take into
account the altruistic preferences and their interactions with other decision making factors. Indeed, economists have long recognized the importance of altruistic preference in
household behavior (Becker and Barrow, 1986; Lindbeck and Weibull, 1988). Previous
Yang Jiao’s Research Statement
research has focused on the impact of altruism on intra-household resource allocation,
especially on distribution of income and consumption (Becker, 1993; Stark and Falk,
1998; Cherchye et al., 2011). To my knowledge, there have been no studies estimating
the correlation of tax treatment and intra-family altruistic preferences.
This paper also explores and investigates the importance of a governmental imposed
intra-family transfer program in household decision. The impacts of such income redistributive program on household’s decisions are shown to vary by taxation. Under
joint taxation, when husband’s wage is sufficiently low, he supplies more time to home
production if the share of transfer he receives is larger; whereas, when wife’s wage is
sufficiently high, she supplies more time to home production if the share of transfer
she receives is smaller. The transfer program is shown to have no impact on the time
allocation decisions of both spouses under individual taxation. These findings have important implications on the association between household time allocation and public
assistant policy.
“The Privatization and Gender Wage Inequality in Urban China”
The 1992 State-Owned Enterprises Privatization Reform is believed to affect labor
market in two ways. First, the collapse of central plan system provides room for discrimination. Second, the competition encourages efficiency in both capital and labor
market. In this paper, we focus on the impact of progress of privatization on the gender
wage gap in urban China. The survey regions are measured on the basis of privatized
rate indicators and classified into low, moderate and high privatized groups. We observe widening gender gaps for all three groups during the period of study. Based on
the Chinese Household Income Projects (CHIPS) data, the decomposition results show
that, of the overall gender gap, the differentials that can be explained by characteristic
endowments is declining from 1995 to 2007, and the unexplained components (“discrimination effect”) contributes more to the differentials. Relatively, the percentage
of the discrimination in the overall wage gap increases as the privatization progresses.
In other words, we find evidence of more gender discrimination, both in absolute term
(log points) and relative term (percentage), in more privatized regions. This paper
receives Revise and Resubmit request at Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and
Society.
“Motherhood, Wages, and Wage Growth”
Understanding why mothers earn less than non-mothers improves our understanding of the gender wage gap and informs the research on female fertility and labor supply
decisions. We use data on hourly wages, education, work experience and fertility decisions of the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79).
Because we observe women during the most fertile part of their life-cycle (early twenties to mid-forties) we can distinguish mothers from non-mothers with little error. We
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Yang Jiao’s Research Statement
find that mothers earn less on average even after controlling for other important wage
determinants. However the wage penalty associated with motherhood is insignificant
in the early career, and arises partly due to mothers accumulating less work experience.
As a result the average age-wage profile of late mothers (first birth after age 25) is very
similar to that of non-mothers. We also show that early mothers (first birth before age
25) experience lower returns to work experience relative to non-mothers. Meanwhile
late mothers experience stronger (weaker) returns to work experience before (after)
their transition to motherhood. We show that these differentials in returns to work
experience are robust to controlling for occupational skill requirements and time spent
out of employment.
Future Research
Upon completing the dissertation, my priority will be to submit them for publication. To revise my job market paper, I plan to test the theoretical predictions by
data and examine how married couples allocate time over work and household activists
using American Time Use Survey Data. In the near future, I would like to continue
my research and apply the theoretical model to different settings, for example, how
would gender differences in altruistic preferences affect parents’ time allocation on
child care? how would different preferences over household expenditure patterns affect
intra-household time allocation over market work, household and leisure? how will
different child care programs affect single parent’s time allocation on work, leisure and
child care?
In the next several years, I anticipate extending my research in the area of immigration and health economics, in particular, economic impact of new immigrants,how
immigration policy and other social polices affect the health outcomes of immigrants,
and how different policies affect immigrant parents’ investment in their children. One
project that I have started is to examine the impact of location choices on educationoccupation mismatch of new immigrants and its long-run effect on skill accumulation.
Finally, I am very much interested in conducting collaborative research with my
prospective colleagues. Collaborative work amalgamates different perspectives and
ideas. Collaborative research also ensures an interdisciplinary transfer of knowledge
and skills, enhances creativity, and develops a sense of research companionship.
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